Dachser keeps rolling with Spanish 3PL acquisition

Friday, January 18, 2013

European logistics provider Dachser, which has a large presence in the United States, has acquired Spanish air and sea logistics firm Transunion for an undisclosed amount.
According to a Dachser press release, Transunion has an average annual revenue of 95 million euros. Transunion employs more than 200 workers in eight Spanish offices and six offices across Turkey and Latin America. Details of the transaction have not been released.
Transunion’s management will stay in place, with a new five-man board at Dachser featuring former Transunion Chief Executive Officer Frederico Camanez and former Chief Financial Officer Vicente Sasera. Camanez will retain his oversight duties at Transunion as a part of the Dachser Air and Sea network, according Dachser’s Martin Neft.
“The company will be taken over as it is and consistently led into the future in cooperation with Dachser,” he told American Shipper. “Thus, for the company’s staff, things will stay as they are, and they will benefit from the overall development of an internationally operating family business.”
The acquisition fits in with Dachser’s Global 2.0 strategy, which has the end goal of expansion to 49 countries, 220 offices and 5,000 employees by 2017. This will be accomplished by a mix of mergers, joint ventures and organic expansion, according to Neft.
In addition to adding a footprint in Spain and giving Dachser more of a presence in Latin America, this acquisition will bring a “significant” increase in sea freight handling volume.
“It’s not every day that the opportunity to find an international forwarding company operating in the important European markets of Spain and Turkey, as well as in large parts of Latin America, presents itself,” he said.
Last month, Dachser acquired the Spanish logistics company Azkar, an organization with more than 3,000 employees that generated 367 million euros in revenue in 2011. Dachser had held a 10-percent stake in the company since 2008. Transunion is an additional piece to what Neft calls a well-developed Hispanic network.
“Dachser now has a closely meshed network on the Iberian Peninsula extending to Portugal. Since Transunion already had subsidiaries with locations in Turkey and South America, transnational markets have now also been integrated into and linked to the network,” he said. “Existing and new customers can thus benefit fully from this network expansion.” - Jon Ross